How did it go? Trisha and Ted’s Alternachat on Tawkers

Necessity is the mother of invention – Trisha Torrey (@TrishaTorrey) and I would not have sought out a new platform if we didn’t think something could be improved upon. This is especially true because of how easy and accessible Twitter is. We realize people don’t want to log into one more platform.

We did our 40 minute-ish chat last Thursday, August 29, on the topic of self-diagnosis. If you go to the URL above, you can see that it is an actual conversation – we didn’t have to Storify it later :).

You can see at the top of the window that there were 165 viewers and 35 participants – there isn’t a tweetreach analytics report. On the other hand, what does a tweetreach analytics report really tell you about audience engagement? Some might say it just says that a tweet scrolled across the screen in a forest where a tree may have fallen.

A platform like this is not well suited to bringing people “in” to the dialogue, and it’s limited to two people – it was created that way. When Trisha and I took it for a test run, we were probably thinking a lot of the same things you might be thinking – how to parallel track this on twitter, bring people in, etc.

I think everything has its place and it’s useful to try something new. I’m really glad I got to actually have a conversation with Trisha, who’s point of view I really respect, and who I thank for being interested in talking to physicians, even in the face of not-so-good experiences in health care.

Next Tweetchat is September 12 on #GreenHC (Environmental Stewardship in Health Care)

I’m doing my next tweetchat on one of my favorite topics soon. Because this one isn’t a dialogue between me and another person, we’re probably going to do it using twitter, with a few tips that I picked up in this dialogue on a previous post (see: What a Tweetchat – U.S. News Health #PatientChat | Ted Eytan, MD) – read the dialogue at the bottom. I’m glad I asked, and I so appreciate the wisdom of the crowd 🙂

Feel free to add your comments about your tweetchat experience – when does it work well, when does it not work well? What are some tools and other things you do to make it work? I am by no means an expert at this, believe me….Thanks in advance.